Baptist World Alliance

Christians and Muslims need to recognize that they are "spiritual siblings," said speakers at a recent global Baptist congress in Hawaii, even as they warned fellow Baptists against the signs of Islamophobia displayed in Western countries.

As many as 1,000 people who had registered for the five-day Baptist World Congress in Honolulu were un­able to attend because their visas were denied by U.S. officials, said leaders of the sponsoring Baptist World Alliance in an opening day news conference July 28.

Members of the Baptist World Alliance’s executive committee, after hearing a sobering financial report detailing investment losses over the last year, agreed to slash the group’s 2009 budget by $900,000, or nearly 30 percent.

Christianity Today International, the publisher of evangelical magazines and online periodicals, has named a new editor-in-chief. HaroldB.Smith, the publishing company’s former executive vice president, has succeeded the leadership team of HaroldMyra and PaulD.Robbins.

The top executive of the Baptist World Alliance plans to retire from the post he has held since 1988. DentonLotz, 67, told the organization’s executive committee during its March 6-8 meeting at BWA headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia, that he would announce his departure time when the BWA General Council meets July 3-8 in Mexico City.

In what would be a first for the Baptist World Alliance, state associations of Southern Baptists in Virginia and Texas—who at times assert their independence from the Southern Baptist Convention—have been recommended as full members in the Baptist World Alliance, the organization that the SBC left last year in an ideological dispute.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a case involving Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman whose right to life has been at the center of a 15-year legal battle. A Florida Supreme Court decision had denied Florida Governor Jeb Bush the power to block a court ruling that Schiavo’s life support be stopped. Her parents had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review that decision.

The Bush administration asked a federal appellate court July 12 to reconsider its spring decision to uphold Oregon’s assisted-suicide law. It would like the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to set aside its May ruling that backed the only law in the country that permits doctors to assist patients in hastening their deaths, the Associated Press reported.

Mel Gibson’sThe Passion of the Christ movie about the death of Jesus earned $17 million over the Easter weekend, making it the eighth-highest grossing film of all time. Gibson’s self-financed blockbuster had earned $354.9 million since it debuted on Feburary 25, Ash Wednesday.

As “a network of churches that circle the planet,” the Southern Baptist Convention must consider changing its name to “reflect who we are and what we are doing nationally and internationally,” SBC President Jack Graham told the Executive Committee of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.